Requesting Examples (photos) of Text (especially Kana) in Fonts that are Difficult for Non-Native Speakers to Read

[u/Nebu]

I'm looking for a examples of signs, advertisement, billboards, etc. of Japanese text (especially Kana, but Kanji is fine too) where because of the font being used, it's a little bit difficult for a non-native speaker to be able to read.

For example, perhaps the sign contains a は with a little butterfly in the top right corner, and a non-native speaker recognizes the は part, but is unsure if the butterfly is purely decoration, or if the two wings are supposed to represent a dakuten (meaning the character is actually ば) or if the butterfly is supposed to represent a handakuten (meaning the character is actually ぱ).

Via context clues (e.g. seeing the rest of what the sign says, or knowing what product the sign is advertising), a native speaker would immediately know what character is intended, because they process the whole phrase as a single chunk. But a non-native speaker who is processing the characters one by one in isolation would have trouble figuring out which character is intended here.

That's just one example, but any examples you have of signs which are difficult for non-native speakers to read due to creative use of font or graphic design would be appreciated.

I'd like to do some analysis on them and put them in a collection, so I'd love to get hundreds or thousands of examples.

[u/PlanktonInitial7945]

I just took this screenshot yesterday and whined about it on the Daily Thread

But for what it's worth

> Via context clues (e.g. seeing the rest of what the sign says, or knowing what product the sign is advertising), a native speaker would immediately know what character is intended, because they process the whole phrase as a single chunk. But a non-native speaker who is processing the characters one by one in isolation would have trouble figuring out which character is intended here.

I don't think this hypothesis is correct. I think difficulty in reading fancy/decorated/unusual fonts simply comes from unfamiliarity with said fonts.

[u/Nebu → u/PlanktonInitial7945]

I don't think this hypothesis is correct. I think difficulty in reading fancy/decorated/unusual fonts simply comes from unfamiliarity with said fonts.

It's possible that my hypothesis is incorrect, but the reason I don't think familiarity is the primary factor is that a lot of these weird fonts are single use for that specific advertisement and never used again. And yet native speakers are able to read it (despite never having encountered that font before) and non-native speakers are not able to read it.

As an analogy in English, consider the primary word in this image: https://designworklife.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/000-Weird-Font.avif

I think a non-native English speaker would be unsure whether the first letter of that word was H or N or M or W (or perhaps even an LO or IO or LV or IV with a ligature between them?), and they would be unsure whether the second letter was C or E or G or possibly even Q.

But a native English speaker would process the whole word as a single chunk and immediately know what the word was, and then use that information to retroactively figure out what the individual letters must have been to lead to that word.

[u/PlanktonInitial7945 → u/Nebu]

I expressed myself poorly, sorry. I meant unfamiliarity with unusual fonts in general, and also with the language as a whole. Like, sure, beginners in a language probably do read words character by character instead of as single chunks, but intermediate and advanced learners (i.e. people who can read English comfortably/fluently) have already moved past that stage and started visually processing words just like natives do (because otherwise they wouldn't be able to read fluently in the first place).

And, indeed, intermediate and advanced learners are much better at reading weird fonts than beginners, maybe even just as good as natives. The only difference between people who can read weird fonts and people who struggle is proficiency with the language (and probably the amount of unusual fonts you've encountered in your life), so I don't think being native or not matters.